A show about one son's exploration into his mum's mental health

Music, Mania, Bipolar, and Psychosis

THANK YOU GIFT! 🎁 BEHIND THE SCENES SNEAK PEEK

Shot at The Wardrobe Theatre | Kickstarter http://kck.st/2sRUdzy
AS A THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE DONATED ON OUR #kickstarter TO HELP US GET TO Assembly Festival HERE IS A SNEAK PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES WITH SCRIPT EXTRACT BELOW…
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Another way I like to think about bipolar, the depression and mania, is as music. So let’s say you put on a track. It sounds how it sounds, if you like it you like it, if you don’t you don’t, that’s normal. But in depression, the music plays but you feel nothing. It’s the same track you liked or disliked the last time you heard it but it has no effect on you, it’s like it’s not even there. That’s depression.

But in Hypomania, when you put that track on, you hear it differently. Even the neighbours can hear it, you’re having a proper jam, the music sounds better, every note, change in pitch, every counter rhythm, every rhythm, you hear things that aren’t even there, I mean what’s a fucking counter rhythm? It makes you feel invincible. It’s like you are the music and the music is you.
But as hypomania hits mania it’s all that and more. There’s only 10 on the volume but you hear it at 11. It’s not music anymore. It’s a cacophony of sound that you can’t escape. You try to turn it down but you’ve lost control. It gets so bad that you smash up the sound system and that’s when the psychosis hits because the music’s still there even after you’ve smashed up the equipment.

But in psychosis the music’s flipped, it’s like nothing you’ve heard before, something from another planet, a message from the galactic federation, and they are speaking directly to you, telling you exactly what to do, you are in control of the cosmos, you are keeping the earth spinning on its axis, you are filling the gap between the tick and the tock, and only you can understand it.